Latest items:
B.Z. Niditch, 19 july 2012
ORIGINAL
Taken for the voice
of a sage
after resistance
to the contary,
refusing all laurels
for nearly being
only a memory
for truth,
without an echo
in annals
of tormented
ridicule,
Buried
as red flesh
without ashes
or speech,
no airs
only whispers
from crowds
who look away.
B.Z. Niditch, 12 august 2012
KATYN FOREST
Fascism wears a red shirt
in the woods,
no one
expects photographs
with a revelation,
only hear-say or rumors
from still cries
as in the crematoriums
or in the Gulag;
we read now
in school or in the news
about the Hitler-Stalin pact,
when
truth died
in the Katyn Forest
there was only silence
for decades
of expressionless faces
with decrees of death
still being ordered
by the wolf man
in the Kremlin
until he departs
unannounced
for Hades.
B.Z. Niditch, 17 july 2012
WARTIME PASSAGE Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012)
Footsteps follow a cat
on snowy streets
near the central station
shadowing Warsaw's night
In a half asleep city
no one sees either of you
stretching silence
by sweet shop windows
Everything disappears
even milk for the cat
moonlight hides
a few ragged strangers
Deportations rise
every quarter of an hour
with dawn's finality
on brownshirted platforms
Angels are not welcome
on your shaved head era
when beasts seize beauty
on a pile of books
Disorder takes on
a life of its own
but you, Wislawa
will have a keepsake.
B.Z. Niditch, 17 july 2012
APPOLINAIRE'S ROOM
Days after your death in Paris,
that town square in Poland
still recites parables of survival
at your passing
making us feel orphaned
as solitude,
older than the most tortured
dog under a tree
begotten by whispers
in the child's art
of dreaming kaleidoscopes
in cathedrals of the blue Madonna
begging for bread and sun
lit by a poet's miracle
of words in unquiet radiance
putting on your pawned
overcoat covering a jacket
of rain showers
walking with a cane of images
outside a tiny room
with the cold bulb
now broken.
B.Z. Niditch, 1 march 2014
REAL TIME
In major acts
of witnessing
these cynical times
as a minor clerk
from the bench,
at a system which passes
out sentences
by corrupt judges
acting like Platonic cave
dwellers all over the world
with soap operas
drama kings and queens
having transgressed
any real time truth
without irony,only rumor
or any sense of humor
by exploiting motives
of personal innuendo.
Over beaten up pages
of records
at a hearing
a thousand lines long
these long robed guys
having explored
words through cases
of evidence
with dull domestic faces
looking like tombstones
in a Dickensian world
to judge and jury
saying in a straight face
who is guilty or not.
B.Z. Niditch, 16 october 2012
CZESLAW MILOSZ 'S AUTOGRAPH
We exchanged autographs
in our slim volumes
between university streets
and picture card Warsaw
on country roads
of pre-war optimism
huddled between whispers
of childhood traveling
from rag pickers of the mind
hearing etudes of Chopin
as any Parisian exile
sinking between
premature fears
over bridges
of history and expatriation
passing sleep houses
from a voiceless hour
on a late train
when a mute shower
of ashes came down
from the heavens
on the tracks
leading to our own
death in life departures.
B.Z. Niditch, 14 october 2012
POST COSMOS (For Witold Gombrowicz 1904-1969)
A lost button
from your coat
of many colors,
a pale carnation
crumpled
in your suit lapel
dies in your seams,
a lazy red eye
between two oceans,
noon and dusk,
evening and day;
angels hide
in darkness,
only death pops out
of nowhere,
where language
is as tentative
as your life.
B.Z. Niditch, 17 july 2012
ACCOMPLICES
A bird dances
on a branch
of evergreen,
not knowing
you're distracted
on your bicycle,
when a soul
with a Slavic accent,
says "After you,"
and holds you up
down the road,
for a divine
appointment.
B.Z. Niditch, 19 july 2012
OBLIVION
No reprimand
of the present
into the light life
without any hour
of being moonstruck
by the past dust
staying on us,
we take our leaves
from dioramas
of a whitewashed time
on easier pathways
than any subterranean
road of emptinesss,
hiding below
white blinds
of broken windows,
smashing rotted fruit
yoked at barren gardens
or castigating
any romantic ruins
of pubescent journeys
at secomd guesses,
those mad expectations
of a fateful gaze
with a glance back
at futile games
in a hopscotch universe
circling toward
separate horizons
we wish to forget.
B.Z. Niditch, 24 september 2016
WATCHING
Watching from a telescope
heights of stars
after my bicycle ride
rests along the Bay
meeting a lost sailor
who caught yellow jack
in islands far from home
here at a frozen shore
ice fishing in a few holes
that he plummets
in halting waves
on waters
at the home harbor anchors
rescuing my orange kayak
still anchored for the spring
as a Canadian robin appears
along the shore.
B.Z. Niditch, 7 january 2015
"IDA," A POLISH FILM
Only if you had been
an adolescent Marxist
in a post revolutionary era
or a later day Christian
after a religious age
has passed you by
at a May Day march of time,
when only children
inspire your absence
from the lost crowd
by the river's edge
alone with your notebook
holding onto a birch branch
with your carved initials
waiting for your lover
or in the silence of a monastery
from a retreat by iron doors
could you expect "Ida"
to surprise you.
B.Z. Niditch, 9 january 2015
PERHAPS
(for Tadeusz Konwicki
22 June 1926 – 7 January 2015)
Perhaps watching
the Konwicki film
"Salto"
with Zbigniew Cybulski,
the Polish James Dean,
last night,
brought back
the times
after lectures
when we would sneak
into art theaters
for two foreign films;
then afterwards
how we would lay
on warm blankets
intertwined with
the grass
by the Charles River.
B.Z. Niditch, 14 june 2015
THOMAS HARDY'S DAY
June 2
1840- 1928
Your novels and poems
leave us melancholy
to the accidents of fate
before we make decisions
we make alterations
from any rhyme of folly
and reach any probabilities
wrestling on words to wait.
B.Z. Niditch, 14 june 2015
DIEGO VALAZQUEZ
born June 6, 1599
As a painter of the brothers
who brought to their father
the fiery bloody coat of colors
of a disfigured Joseph
dropped once in a well
like those who once desired
to hide from their guilty crime
yet we watch Joseph raised up
in Egypt to interpret dreams
became a Jewish dreamer
and beloved prime minister
to be honored for all time
for sin is shamed in history,
yet justice reigns, it seems.
B.Z. Niditch, 19 september 2016
THE MOON'S SOLITUDE
In the moon's solitude
waiting to read
new poem sequences
among the last red leaves
waiting to play sax
in the breathing of waves
from a montage of pages
in my impatient mind
outside my window
are stars too embarrassed
by grieving
for the silent woman
a longtime friend, Anna,
who has family in Paris
telling her the only answer
is to love a heart that is light
and she asks me to play
a lucid French piano tune
of her childhood
before she left for America
the Germans invaded
her luminous memory.
B.Z. Niditch, 18 december 2015
LET THIS DECEMBER
Let this December dawn
be a morning
of such American perception
that signs and wonders
will be in our
hiking direction
thinking to pause
on windows
to watch chimeras
of songbirds
hearing cicadas
and cardinals go South
on whatever road
by Robert Frost's birches
or James Dean's cycles
thanking life's moments
for a worthwhile day spent
bemused by glimpsing times
of recluse J.D.Salinger
in Vermont
looking for miracles
of Kerouac's prose
or visiting Emily Dickinson
at Amherst groves
where we park
on the right routes
over expressway obstacles
by a thick river of cars
as a cool mortal Beat
and a smooth jazz guy
within my hands,
toes and feet
may pardon, circle
and disclose
of their memory.
B.Z. Niditch, 14 september 2016
IN A DARK GROVE
In the dark grove
near the Seine
at the finish line
here at a church
near a Paris road race
midnight becomes the tree
of life in an Eden's garden
where exiles are conceived
in river bed dreams
of prayers to St. Joan of Arc
to deliver
a murmuring baby
who emerges smiling
by the greensward park
in a laurel crib's
smiling stroller.
B.Z. Niditch, 1 march 2014
RECITAL
The thunderstorm
daydream leaps
over a mushroom search
my eyes are volcanoes
at the grand piano
opening here in Warsaw
chasing my sunny breath
on the bridge
late for an afternoon recital
the "E" string
walks away from me
unsuspecting the passages
of Chopin's embracing notes.
B.Z. Niditch, 28 february 2014
MARCH BLUES AND BLAHS
Today's sky
will not be missed
in a sorry shade
of black and blue
when Arctic air
quietly smuggled in
from the East freezes
our lifeless bodies
of snow into ice
bright figurines
and my sax
is exposed
as my three oranges
eaten on my motorcycle
on the jazzy corner
for my timely gig,
yet a surreal poet is still
a Beat for life
in his runaway suit
when the same shade
shines in darkness
from a downtown club
on the window blinds
as a stranger offers
to help me
staring back at him
with a sponged fog
fills up the gas
both knowing the blahs
will not outlast
the skittering waters
on our faces
from snow kisses
and that spring
may be early
when words again flow
and my sax
will again beat out
its underground notes
to play the Blues.
B.Z. Niditch, 8 february 2013
DRAWING
It seems to me,
the Polish painter
near the pond
drawing in
my welcome
to his own service
by jagged lines
on his canvas
in a white blouse
has an endless
watch for color
with a dialogue
between this poet,
a charred surrealist
as well,
gathers around
an easel of aesthetic
interpretation.
B.Z. Niditch, 27 february 2014
NATURE'S WOODWINDS
Deep down
at the crag's edge
the leaves tumble across
the great green hills
as portents
of your solitude
knowing the path
to climb
up the shadowy mountain
and deserted peaks
will be clear
for a lone traveler
with his backpack
full of pure poems
the shadows blush
at first light
expecting
the woodwinds
to sound
near the saxifrage
with blackberries
all around
as I spy
a mapped trail
shielding me
from quivering trees
a piano sonata
in the distance
with an echo
of capturing
a passage of Chopin
from this moment.
B.Z. Niditch, 10 august 2012
GOODBYE 20th
Twenty centuries
of hushed secrets;
Stalin grins
like a bad toothpick,
sending away souls
to the Gulag
in caravans of archangels
somewhere in snowy
Siberian towns;
the "new man"
building on ant hills
of humanity,
in Warsaw
a roll calls your name
in a manacled world
of arrivals and departures
that never make
the daily news.
B.Z. Niditch, 28 february 2014
RECITAL
The thunderstorm
daydream leaps
over a mushroom search
my eyes are volcanoes
at the grand piano
opening here in Warsaw
chasing my sunny breath
on the bridge
late for an afternoon recital
the "E" string
walks away from me
unsuspecting the passages
of Chopin's embracing notes.
B.Z. Niditch, 14 september 2016
TO ROCK THE BOAT
To rock the boat over me
knowing an aging poet
is always in exile
shipwrecked on the ocean
or by merely visiting
the company of another.
B.Z. Niditch, 14 september 2016
THE TAXI CAB MAN
The poet asks how much
as his Dutch friend
puts his hand
on the meter
does not dare
to talk about money
at new year's time
they are both tired
and stood up tonight
by their double dates
two bouquets of roses
lie on the front seat,
the poet needs to
study French
in the library
on the back bench
waiting for his exam,
but he will not take
the cab driver away
from his grave yard shift
lasting a life time.
B.Z. Niditch, 14 september 2016
AT THE THEATER
Watching
"The Seagull"
with my friends
up in the balcony
with a confessional
love poem
slowly emerging
in my smiling
imagination,
there is no language
that could sabotage
or upstage
the Beat in me
with my sax of a soul
out here
in the provinces
of France
anyway
it is starting to rain
off the islands
and my girl friend
suddenly asks me
for tickets
to see Adele
wondering if our life
merely repeats
the family dialogue
from any generation
in any lyrical play
or musical language
will send me back
to my early childhood
making my thoughts
and aching spirit rise
between two continents.
B.Z. Niditch, 14 september 2016
A FUTURE POET
Who will wish
to become a poet
is a dreamer
of the surreal
who dresses
in a white suit
and coat of many colors
speaks in dada
from two tongues,
Polish and French
plays hide and seek
by a bench of a monastery
under hidden garden walls
the winds rise up
from the dusty rain
round his eyelids
near the edge
of the shore.
B.Z. Niditch, 16 october 2012
RETURN TO WARSAW
No inspection needed
at the border,
caught by authorities
reading "Trans-Atlantyk"
on a train
with the picture and odor
of the Katyn forest
and Treblinka,
from an old obituary notice
in a tabloid newspaper
stuffed in my shabby suitcase,
with a faded cross and star
on the luggage logo
by aimless trees
returning to Poland
after forty years of rain,
does anyone leave here
or return
without radar or passport
marked exile, pious
or cosmopolitan
stamped in one's conscience
of a lost soul.
B.Z. Niditch, 7 september 2016
T.S. ELIOT AT ROCKPORT
It is to the rocks at Pigeon Cove
watching the cormorants
and not to the monotonous tide
at St. Ann's sandbar
that will salvage your name
it is to the ocean
and not to the fluid borders
that will embroider you
by the stones and surf
in the morning mist
of your mineral waters
that will anoint you
from the anchors
of the tourist boat
from Boston
through a water song shadow
that will offer prayer
to your conscience
in a cup's communion
and it is to the silence
of the eagle
perched on the harbor dock
in the windshield of the sun
that will lock your eyelids
into your torpor of mind
familiar though
a threatening storm
that will save the whole sky
in a flushed warm
August dog day
of a fevered heat wave
that leaves
your conflated memory
in language
by a daybreak sentence
to make any sense
as the birds chatter
and the clouds scatter
why does it matter,
by the parking lots
of visitors with their mirrors
of the past that enfold across
their own corridors
as maps are lost on bridges
and are caught by the lone sail
down the hills
by the rails of the last train
that sought to visit by the dunes
or pursue a wanton shadow
of days that are narrow
as you kneel by your bed
by nail scarred hands
knowing as the noon bell rings
and a choir sings
inside you believes the face
of a memoir
is being composed
and small birds are clinging
to Evergreen branches
by the muggy rose garden
to pardon us all in grace.
B.Z. Niditch, 7 september 2016
A KID AT THE CHELSEA
In a hotel room with a small t.v.
staring at cartoons, commercials
game shows and comedies
where at noon in a grainy stall
you leave your lame worry
for all the walled slogans
of graffiti
in a flushed shower
of a vocabulary
of assaulting words
(while I'm all in prayer
of St. Francis
with melancholy
but hope to attain
better in an after life)
with this continued
rainy abyss
waiting for a brief
answer of "Yes"
near my Advent clock radio
without an hour's prohibition
of sister doing
origami for a stranger
wanting to be spent anywhere
than in this hourly
Kafka burlesque
by the florid window
hearing a flock
of pigeons and a crow
in a metamorphosis
of humoresque
when the time is set
for creation
or to be at another
train track
to visit the 14th station
or else crossing
in another direction
at no man's land
at Christmas time
to be near Bethlehem's manger
yet an art director
wants to view
my play tomorrow
about Roualt's colorful clown
and coming down from
the bay at Boston
to audition on
off-off-Broadway
racked by sorrow,
I try to pray.
Latest comments:
18 may 2024
kb
jakoś kojarzy mi się z "siostrami wielkiej
18 may 2024
no chyba że pomieszkuje
18 may 2024
zdaje się że nikt tu już nie mieszka
18 may 2024
bardzo
18 may 2024
orzeźwieni... prawie jak otrzeźwieni... i to
16 may 2024
violetta
Może w lipcu będę miała takie wakacje:)
16 may 2024
jeśli tylko
słońce w płynie..
15 may 2024
Weronika
Za jeszcze jeden rejs!
14 may 2024
Mam takie oko :)
14 may 2024
Jaga
Zwierzęta upodobniły się do koloru otoczenia
14 may 2024
To naturalny suchy i pustynny klimat. I tam są
14 may 2024
Klimat taki, że nie był i raczej nie będzie,
19 may 2024
wiesiek
19 may 2024
Satish Verma
18 may 2024
Satish Verma
17 may 2024
Satish Verma
16 may 2024
Satish Verma
15 may 2024
Jaga
15 may 2024
Satish Verma
14 may 2024
Satish Verma
13 may 2024
Satish Verma
11 may 2024
Satish Verma